Ward Yoshimoto has lived and worked in New York City for the past twenty years as a commercial photographer and fine artist. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he attended CSU Dominguez Hills as a Design and Studio Major, and then in 1985 received his BFA in Photography from The Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California. In 1999 he received his MFA in Sculpture from Brooklyn College. He has continued to explore issues about art, photography, sculpture, the digital world, the human condition; these among others are some of his concerns. He has shown both nationally and internationally and is currently preparing for his exhibition at Xanadu Gallery this spring in NYC. He has attended several retreats including a residency at The MacDowell Colony in 2004.

Mr. Yoshimoto, in his investigation of sculpture, has tried to also bring in issues that are often applied to painting, photography, and the digital world. In making his work he is very aware of the materials and objects he uses to tell his story, while also being faithful to the process and processes of creating a unique piece of work. His assemblages of common objects are able to create new ways of seeing and thinking, while often self referential they play to common themes and look for our relationship to the human experience. His new works, by using hardware cloth as a structural material, have an instant grid format and a mathematical relationship to space. In this way he is able to have a dialog within his work referencing architecture, minimalism, photography, virtual space, and digital media.

Using mass-produced materials, along with more specific objects he creates tableaus that inform ideas or create a visual message that is often abstract, obtuse, and intriguing. Mr. Yoshimoto commingles American and Japanese traditions and craftsmanship in his deft assemblages of found objects. Referencing Dada, Surrealism, and Pop, as well as the turbulent social and political landscape of his youth, Mr. Yoshimoto’s wry constructions address an ongoing history of cultural displacement with equal parts iconoclastic brio and meditative, almost obsessive rigor. In this singular brand of contemporary suburban folk art, cocktail stirrers, crucifixes, clocks, and pool balls assume formations as whimsical as they are poignant—the detritus of the American Dream washed ashore, picked over, and reassembled in an attempt to piece together a sense of identity amid the constant flux of contemporary life.

At the end of the day, it’s still always about the work. - Mr. Ward Yoshimoto